Viewing child pornography online isn't a crime, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the case of a college professor whose work computer was found to have stored more than a hundred illegal images in its Web cache.

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The decision rests on whether accessing and viewing something on the Internet is the same as possessing it, and whether possessing it means you had to procure it. In essence, the court said no to the first question and yes to the second.

"Merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement within the meaning of our Penal Law," Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote for a majority of four of the six judges.

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"Rather, some affirmative act is required (printing, saving, downloading, etc.) to show that defendant in fact exercised dominion and control over the images that were on his screen," Ciparick wrote. "To hold otherwise, would extend the reach of (state law) to conduct â€” viewing â€” that our Legislature has not deemed criminal."

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So the legislature needs to get busy ... and quickly to close the loophole to help jail the pervs.

Also another reason for me to dislike new york ... already hate all teams new york.

Huh, if he stored it then how did he not possess it? Judge needs to go.

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He was convicted on counts where the info was stored. He was cleared on the count where there was a file in his browser cache. That is a valid but subtle point (BTW the guy was caught because his CPU was runnung slow and he asked have it fixed and they found files in the cache and other folders.).

The legals issue is this, Say yo are browsing legal (porn sites) and you get a pop up with kiddie porn pics, you close the window and don't go to the site or otherwise view the illegal file from the pop up, you don't store or knowlingly visit any site with illegal files, your cache isn't cleared and the authorities find out, about the file in the cache, should you go to jail? Same if you are infected with a virus and something is stored in the cache.

The judge in this case said no he wasn't liable for the file inthe cache, since he didn't store or print the file.